According to PFT, Horton was pissed when he was passed over. Now he's out, I am assuming he refused to stay there. Man, not a great way for the new era of the cardinals to begin. Sure does make me smile though.

They just hired a 4-3 guy whose talented D gave up 31 points per game to take over a 3-4 D. LOL!

Dude, WTF? The only thing going good about that team was the Defense this year. Arians was run out of Pittsburgh only to coach Luck for one season and now was the "hot" name coach they went after instead of a guy that proved to get the defense to play for him even with a crap season. Dumb moves for Arizona, Arians just made a big mistake going to a division with 3 good qb's and legit defenses for each team on top of losing a good defensive coach.

It would've been in the Cardinals best interest to do anything possible to keep Horton even if that meant making him head coach. With him and that defense they are a quarterback away from being a legit playoff team. Without him the Cardinals have basically doubled their issues. Not only are they going to have to fix that abomination of an offense, they're going to have to completely re-haul the defense as well. I like Arians but he's going to find life in the NFL much more difficult without the talent of the Steelers or to cupcake schedule of the Colts.

I think Arians is alright, slightly above average OC, but I noticed he loves that inside WR screen a little too much with 3 bunched overload and a TE or WR on the other side and pitch it/run it up the middle. That is death against a team like San Francisco for your WR. I would rather have Horton given the choice.

To keep Horton, they likely would have needed to make him the HC. It's not like they were going to find a solid HC candidate by saying right off the bat, "You can come in, but you can't replace the DC."

But Arizona's biggest need is finding a starting QB and being able to develop him, and Horton simply can't do that. I imagine when he was interviewed, he was asked about his possible choices for OC and how he would develop Kolb or whoever they went with. I guess by the way things played out, they didn't rank his answer as their top choice.

Arians has been known to be good with QBs. He was Peyton Manning's first QB coach in the NFL, was the OC in Pittsburgh when the Steelers starting passing more (and Roethlisberger put up bigger numbers), and oversaw Luck last year. So I imagine that played heavily in his favor when Arizona was making their decision.

In the end, I think they hope that the talent Arizona has on D will make up for whatever schematic changes do to the D, while at the same time getting a guy who can actually make their offense work. I think the goal is to change the team where it has a solid D and an improving O rather than an outstanding D and an absolutely horrific O.

From reading further about the fallout, it seems that Horton promised Norv Turner as the OC when he interviewed. Seeing as Chudzinski, the new Browns HC, just made Turner his OC yesterday, I imagine that hurt Horton's chances.

As reported by XTRA 910′s Mike Jurecki earlier in the week, Horton told the Cardinals he could deliver Norv Turner as his offensive coordinator and Mike Tice as his offensive line coach. Those would be big-time additions, and Turner’s reputation as a play-caller would seem to mute any concerns about the offense.

That wasn’t the case. And that would seem to indicate there’s something about Horton that doesn’t make the Cardinals all that comfortable.

The situation is coming to a boil. Earlier in the week, a report surfaced that Bruce Arians would bring in his own defensive coordinator if hired by the Cardinals. Arians’ agent denied that report, but Arians wouldn’t commit to Horton on Thursday.

He told reporters that “it’s way too early in the process” to address a potential staff.

Of course, that’s nonsense. The interview process demands a head coach to reveal such things.

volsunghawk wrote:From reading further about the fallout, it seems that Horton promised Norv Turner as the OC when he interviewed. Seeing as Chudzinski, the new Browns HC, just made Turner his OC yesterday, I imagine that hurt Horton's chances.

Horton as head coach with Norv Turner running the offense would have been a scary combination. So glad to hear that the Cardinals screwed everything up instead.